Author: Jacob Cone

[Literary Games Group] 24/3/21 – Boundaries, Dreams, and Systems

Hi everyone,
This week we went over Chapter 6 of Ensslin’s Literary Gaming. We talked a lot about the antiludicity of games – that is, the way we can challenge how games get us to play them, and how, with that knowledge, we can subvert games as objects to be played. This involved a bit of discussion around pushing the boundaries in games, how we can play them as the developers did not intend them to be played – or if you wanted to push further, you could mod or cheat the game. As we push the boundaries, we find out whether the developers put in safety nets or difficulty barriers to stop people from breaking the game. As we discovered, quite often you can find a way to outsmart games – in this instance, we discussed Pathologic and Skyrim – simply by playing them in an unexpected way – though sometimes the game becomes traditionally unplayable as a result.

We also had a bit of discussion around the idea of griefing, of destroying another player’s works or of pushing past a certain boundary and causing another real person some form of distress through the actions undertaken in a virtual world. This can range from something as simple and “disconnected” from a real person as getting to areas in games that are supposed to be developer-only through exploits and glitches, or something as harmful as the hostile takeover of another person’s avatar and making them perform horrible actions.

Next week’s reading is Chapter 7 from Ensslin’s book. We will meet at the same time – 1pm on a Tuesday (in this instance, the 30th), in room 1W4 in the Arts Building. We are still playing The Dream Machine, though we are also preparing to move on to another game, and discussing possibilities for those games. One of those is The Outer Wilds.

Hope to see you round soon!

[Literary Games Group] 17/3/21

Hello again everyone,

This week we discussed Chapter 5 of Astrid Ensslin’s Literary Gaming, which primarily revolved around the idea of learning how to play through play itself, with engagement and interactivity as a product of the interface and UI itself. There was also an interesting point about categorizing movements – that is, the physical way we play games as in mouse-clicks, arm movements, and eye movements – and the potential of analyzing them to find how we best interact with a game.
We also played the primary text referenced by Ensslin – the game Loss of Grasp by Serge Bouchardon, which you can play here. It is, suffice it to say, very clever, and worth your time. You do need a webcam to see the ending though, as we discovered…

I have also attached next week’s reading to the email, Chapter 6, entitled “Loss of Innocence”. We will be again discussing it in 1W4 in the Arts Building at 1pm on Tuesday.

We continued playing the third chapter of The Dream Machine this week, the game made of real cardboard and clay that took two people nine whole years to finish. Not much new to report on that front there beyond the fact that we are still enjoying the experience of the game, and I’m looking forward to dissecting it a bit more when we’ve reached a later point in the game. The whole game is currently on sale for NZD $6 until the 23rd of March, so if you were interested in buying it to play for yourself, you can pick it up from Steam!

Hope to see you next week!

[Literary Games Group] 10/3/21

Hi everyone,

We had our first meeting of the Literary Games Group for this year on the 10th, where we discussed our plans for at least the next five or six weeks of semester. We’re going to be continuing with our reading from last year, Astrid Ensslin’s Literary Gaming. I’ve attached a link to the book for your perusal. When we reconvene next week (as always, Tuesday at 1pm in the Digital Humanities Hub, room 1W4 on the first floor of the Arts Building) we’ll discuss the chapter we are currently on, hopefully in relation to some of the games we will be playing.

We began playing our first “project-game” as a group, The Dream Machine, a story-rich point-and-click adventure game with some themes that aren’t normally explored in a lot of video games. It also has a fairly unique art style for a video game, being a game made from clay and cardboard. I’m hoping to explore this game’s story and themes as a group, as well as some of the simple and traditional mechanics that the game has, and whether they are good enough to carry the game’s fairly heavy themes.

We also played a short, politically motivated (and darkly humourous) game made in Twine called You Are Jeff Bezos, which is also free if you wanted to check it out. To finish the meeting we also looked at a few interesting, almost archival, videos that attempt to summarize years of gaming in roughly two minutes. You can watch the best one here.

Hope to see some of you again next week!

[Literary Games Group] 8/5/20 Defining Literary Games and Exploring Subversion

Today we read through the third chapter of the book Literary Gaming, and found out really why the book is called Literary Gaming – it explores the concepts of how to game in a literary fashion, but also how to define literary games – and even experiences which we wouldn’t define as games, but still involving some ludicity – that is, still some element of play within them. The different types of games are available to look at in the graph I’ve attached at the bottom of this post.

We also discussed the results of our Bartle test – a test which determines what kind of gamer you are personality-wise (primarily in relation to the way you approach multiplayer RPGs, but it can grow to extend the way you approach other games too). I discovered I’m a combination of Explorer and Socializer, with Achiever and Killer far down the list.

After our discussion of the chapter (the next chapter is available to read here) we went on to explore another game I’d discovered just a few weeks prior called Indecision. Indecision. is a game that masterfully subverts the way we approach videogames, specifically 2D platformer, by constantly baiting you to act a particular way and changing the rules for victory, and we can critically examine ourselves and the way we play and function.
It’s also a lot of fun! Extremely clever, too.

We finished our session with a bit of Pathologic 2 gameplay, which we’ll continue with next week to finish the two or so hours of gameplay that are on offer in this particular “chapter” or segment of the game.

Hope to see you around!

[Literary Games Group] 29/7/20 Paratopic and Exploring Literary Gaming

Today we read the next chapter of the book Literary Gaming – “Playing With Rather Than By Rules” in which we examined games as not just entertainment, but as political tools and weapons for activism and hacktivism, which is how such a popular medium will likely be used more and more as we begin to enter a more mature age of video game storytelling.

There are also several different ludology theories we learned about, my favourite concept being that of Johan Huizinga’s “magic circle” – the space and state that we enter when we play a game, where we buy into the fantasy or essentially “sign a contract” with the game allowing you to be immersed and follow rules that are different from the regular world, whether they be scientific or ethical rules.
Over the next week, we’ll be looking at the next chapter, which you can read here if you are interested.

Later in the session we booted up the short 2018 game, Paratopic, which I have played before but was keen to introduce the other members of the group to. The developers (Arbitrary Metric) themselves describe it best, saying that “Paratopic [is] an atmospheric retro-3D horror adventure through a cursed fever dream.” It subverts how we regularly experience video game stories and challenges our interpretation of events by making things deliberately unclear. It is an excellent, very unique, game that I have been a fan of since I played it last year, which I can highly recommend to anyone who is interested in non-linear narrative and experimental video games.

Interestingly, when asked to describe how the game made them feel, the player and viewers who hadn’t played the game could only say – “I don’t know”, and  “disgusted” which I believe means that the game is doing its job very well, utilizing its game design and story together to create a potent experience, like a forbidden game you stumbled across in an archive somewhere.

Hope to see you around, looking forward to seeing what kinds of literary games other people have played and recommend!

[Literary Games Group] 22/7/20 Deciding On A “Game As A Project”

Today we discussed the kinds of games that might appeal to us as a  running project or thing to analyze in the weeks to come. There are plenty of worthy candidates, but we want to find something that’s not overly long while still being deep enough to really sink our teeth into.
And also something that is entertaining for others to ask questions of while we’re watching the person playing on the projector!

One of the more recent games that comes to my mind is Hideo Kojima’s latest release, Death Stranding, which is essentially a game as a societal statement. Walking simulators are an oft-derided genre for their simplicity, but they have the capacity to tell interesting stories, even if the gameplay can be considered undercooked. Kojima took it upon himself to make a walking simulator about the feeling of isolation and reuniting a divided country. It’s a great game, and one to keep on the radar as we continue.

Death Stranding (2019)

We also explored a superb Twine experiment that you can access for free here, which is an immensely challenging game, but not in the traditional, gameplay sense. Won’t spoil anything about it just yet, in hope you’ll experience it for yourself blind!
It makes for a great taster for the sort of games we’re looking at and the kind of projects we’d love to find out more about.

Finally, we began reading the book Literary Gaming by Astrid Ensslin, and figured out how to define literary games going ahead with the group. In it, she describes how literary games can grow to encompass fields previously unthought of, and how the melding of video games and traditionally literary media can advance storytelling and video games at once in leaps and bounds. On to chapter two!

Hope to see you round!

[Literary Games Group] 15/7/20 First Update

After our first meeting, we’ve come away with a good understanding of the kinds of places we want to go, the experiences we want to share, and the aspects of games that we want to explore.

No one lives under the lighthouse (2020)

Games are a young  medium, and a medium catering to a very broad audience, that unfortunately doesn’t always appreciate the kinds of very intelligent and subversive game design that new developers, especially indie developers, are coming up with – games that challenge you not just as a player, but as a person. I think there is a lot of fun to be had from exploring games and their ultimate potential, exploring choice, consequence and how games allow us to inhabit roles in fantastic worlds we wouldn’t otherwise be able to be a part of. We can assert our will and our choices on a game, and I think that’s a really interesting thing to be able to explore. Watching others play games and see the choices they make compared to you is a great way to gain a deeper appreciation for a game, and it’s one of the ways we’ll be proceeding from here.

To start the group we’ll also be looking at a book available here, reading the introduction for this week as we figure out how we approach games as things to be analyzed and enjoyed as works of art in their own right.

Hope to see you around!